Support NeoGAF

[Bl@de]

Exactly. I don't get why many posters here are trying to push for their favorite console game when the title simply says "most technically-advanced game" with literally no other criteria than "technically advanced."

Maybe because a lot of people don't know anything about the technology behind it or don't care. How many people know how dynamic lightning, tesselation and all that stuff works? Who knows the exact differences between DirectX9 , DirectX10?

Hell I didn't know most of the stuff until I bought a book last year about it, where it is explained how a CPU,GPU and all that stuff actually work on a technical/physical level.

But who would've expected something else. If you want this thread to head in a better direction you would have to make it on a technology-first oriented forum and not a gaming forum.

 

[herod]

No it is obviously called " what PC/Sega/MS game you fapped most furiously to each year". Denying any KZ2, U2, GOW3 and most importantly DriveClub's presence in this thread is total fanboyism.

But heck, trying to be objective without having any base to do it, in a world of subjectives like GAF is and should be, is totally absurd.

This isn't science like all these guys are trying to say here, there is no benchmark about this or even hierarchy of the tech used in gaming. You know it's not because a tech is very expensive power-wise that it's the most advanced out there, trying to go this route isn't objective at all or near to it, and it can't be done without any bias.

What "wowed" you the most is a good metric, in fact the most objective one if you really assume you are indeed and fundamentally a subjective mind. That's it.

Guys coming with WiiU games are perfectly fine, even if I don't support their opinions, I can agree some of the stuff seen on WiiU is, indeed, very impressive.



That was a totally viable opinion back in the day. Trying to rewrite history I'm thinking.

Nothing came close to KZ2 when I played the beta back in the day. Fact, no one believed those graphics were possible in real time without a very high end machine.

*snigger*

 

[benzy]

That's also a model where shadows are completely black sans indirect illumination. Games don't render this way.

Games with a dynamic shadow model will render similarly. Some game models could make up for the dark shadows by updating with a mixture of baked and real-time shadows. In DriveClub's case there's nothing in the lighting or shadows that's baked. It relies on GI to get that kind of opaqueness in the shadows, sometimes it doesn't look too great as the car shadows could be a bit less opaque to the point where the car looks floating.

Simulating GI in Unreal Engine works the same way as that model example you said games don't render.

 

[KKRT00]

Games with a dynamic shadow model will render similarly. Some game models could make up for the dark shadows by updating with a mixture of baked and real-time shadows. In DriveClub's case there's nothing in the lighting or shadows that's baked. It relies on GI to get that kind of opaqueness in the shadows, sometimes it doesn't look too great as the car shadows could be a bit less opaque to the point where the car looks floating.

Simulating GI in Unreal Engine works the same way as that model example you said games don't render.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/lates.../LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/3DirectOnly.jpg
https://docs.unrealengine.com/lates...tingAndShadows/Lightmass/3FirstBounceOnly.jpg[
https://docs.unrealengine.com/lates...LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/3FourBounces.jpg

Or here He basically shows GI on and off option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GWuk6o4ms#t=85

 

[wazoo]

Is the problem thinking that 'Technology' only pertains to 'Hardware'? It's very much not.

The OP was clear about his discussion being hardware related.

Consoles were not the most powerful hardware (2001 and 2006 may be the exception, I do not know enough about PC in that timeframe) available any year. They are cheap and convenient closed systems for the masses. It is even more the case since Nvidia started the SLI with no watt limitation.

 

[benzy]

Or here He basically shows GI on and off option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GWuk6o4ms#t=85

Thanks. Will check it out after work.

 

[Phediuk]

I'm not denying anyone the right to discuss anything. I'm just suggesting that if what they wish to discuss is at odds with the OP's topic, then maybe they should become the OP of a different thread. There aren't any concrete measures of one game's technology being more advanced than another's, but when the game your comparing against does pretty much everything technologically that your suggestion does, but more, then it's hard to make a case for it, regardless of how nice you think it looks.

One way I look at it is, if you imagine swapping the games over onto each other's platform, is one of them suddenly completely infeasible in its current form? If so then it's probably more deserving of the spot in this thread.

With that said though, there has been some confusion in regards to what the OP was looking for with this thread. I initially assumed that it was the merits of each game regardless of the hardware it ran on... but it seems like he considers the power of the hardware itself to be a prerequisite. That's fine and all, but then I think some of his suggestions don't fit his own criteria (pretty much anything on any console).

I think "Other contenders" was a poor choice of words. Should have been "Other notable games" or something. I wanted the thread to avoid becoming a "most influential game" or "most innovative game" or "most impressive game relative to its platform" thread, so I chose the word "contender" to emphasize the focus on hardware power, but there are still some games I chose on lesser hardware (within a reasonable disparity) that I thought were pushing tech in groundbreaking ways. Hence why I did not include Elite; yeah, okay, it's a brilliant game, but it's also on 8-bit home computers that were a couple of orders of magnitude inferior to arcade boards of the time. I do not consider that comparable to the difference between the Xbox 360 and a 2006 PC, which was relatively modest.

I think that is the source of the confusion. I'll change the wording a bit.

 

[Synth]

I think "Other contenders" was a poor choice of words. Should have been "Other notable games" or something. I wanted the thread to avoid becoming a "most influential game" or "most innovative game" or "most impressive game relative to its platform" thread, so I chose the word "contender" to emphasize the focus on hardware power, but there are still some games I chose on lesser hardware (within a reasonable disparity) that I thought were pushing tech in groundbreaking ways. Hence why I did not include Elite; yeah, okay, it's a brilliant game, but it's also on 8-bit home computers that were a couple of orders of magnitude inferior to arcade boards of the time. I do not consider that comparable to the difference between the Xbox 360 and a 2006 PC, which was relatively modest.

I think that is the source of the confusion. I'll change the wording a bit.

Yea, I get what you were going for (and put like that, I can kinda see your issue with Elite also). I guess I was just a little thrown off by what appear to be a hard line in the sand that shouldn't have allowed some of the other nominations if enforced. I either the disparity isn't really very similar.

I definitely prefer your approach to the thread, rather than leaving it completely open, where everyone would likely simply argue their fondest gaming memory each year from console manufacturer X though. We have plenty of that in pretty much every other thread even loosely related to graphics.

 

[Phediuk]

Okay, I now explicitly mention Elite as a notable game for 1984, specifically emphasizing what it does that no other game--not just games of its type or platform--had not.

Hopefully that allays some concerns.

 

[xenorevlis]

Apparently it isn't. It's exactly that; pretty games on high end hardware.

I noticed that it seems to be going that way, as people constantly tout massive levels or post-processing effects that are simply very simplistic things thrown in abundance at higher-end hardware. Still, if people want to stick to just visuals they can. Driveclub's atmospheric effects, GI setup, PBR approach is on the same incredible level of Ryse, but spread out across miles of digital terrain. Are there low-res assets off in the background? Of course, but it is a RACING GAME.

In Crysis Warhead, which came out a year earlier... there is an entire train sequence but you can actually get off the train at any time... and it is not just repeating level sections.. .but rather driving through a real multiple kiometer long space. Similarly, the facial and body animation in something like Crysis is more than comparable. As well as almost every "set piece" moment in the game being driven by an actual physics engine, and not a play backed canned cut scene. Hence why something like Arma is technically advanced, it is doing everything via simulation.

I mean... I think all those games look great on their hardware, but they are just not doing things which are necessarily new and groundbreaking, but working their technical limitations well into their art.

On the other hand, rendering wise I think something like KZSF is doing quite a god damn lot, and deserves a great contender mention for 2014. More so than infamous for example.

While a massive level is fine and dandy, we're talking about technical aspects of a game. What Uncharted 2's train level and other destructible enviroments combined were playable action and set pieces that had advanced systems to make things like the repeating-but-unique chunks stream and having a character with an incredible amount of animations on them physically linked to another object that is also impacted by physics. Stuff that Shadow of the Colossus took a step in the direction of and more recent games like Dragon's Dogma used extensively.

I agree, although I think contenders is all they really are. Metro 2033 for example, completely outclasses God of War 3 graphically.

Oh, absolutely, I too am simply saying they are definitely contenders.God of War and Uncharted's developers also used the Cell to pull off some very amazing visual effects such as the DoF and motion-blur implementations beyond other games of the same years. PC games soon followed with much more advanced hardware behind it and these days bokeh DoF and per-object motion blur precision is king on even my gaming laptop

 

[Alej]

Hopefully, it will be other games on the radar. But PC should be the platform of choice, since "the most advanced tech" in 2015 is definiitely a PC hardware (like tri-SLI of GTX 980).

So, most advanced tech is the most powerful or is it the most power efficient? Honest question.

*snigger*

Good point. Thanks for your input, much appreciated.

Is it really okay to be that condescendent here on GAF? I took time to write my thoughts and I only deserve this? Please.

 

[chromatic9]

Scramble was a good looking game and hitech back in 1981. Seems more advanced than Defender.

 

[Synth]

Is it really okay to be that condescendent here on GAF? I took time to write my thoughts and I only deserve this? Please.

To be fair... in your previous reply to me you did talk about "the usual suspects you know, the same platform warriors breaking every threads lately on GAF because of their persistent insecurity".

You didn't specify exactly who you were referring to, but I doubt they deserve it simply for arguing that people should be arguing based on what the topic is, and not what they want it to be.

 

[mclem]

The OP was clear about his discussion being hardware related.

Hmmm. I think the problem here is this:

"the game that pushes the most powerful hardware the furthest, representing the bleeding edge of video game tech for each year

The issue is that I don't regard those two statements as related to one another; I do not think "the game that pushes the most powerful hardware the furthest" automatically is "the game that represents the bleeding edge of video game tech for the year". Faced with that oxymoron, I focussed on the latter one, which seemed to be the intent of what was requested - and, I have to say, I felt would make a more interesting and nuanced discussion.

 

[KKRT00]

The issue is that I don't regard those two statements as related to one another; I do not think "the game that pushes the most powerful hardware the furthest" automatically is "the game that represents the bleeding edge of video game tech for the year". Faced with that oxymoron, I focussed on the latter one, which seemed to be the intent of what was requested - and, I have to say, I felt would make a more interesting and nuanced discussion.

It wouldnt be a good discussion, because You would have even more posts from people who look at art and thinks this is tech. Hardware must be included into the discussion.

There is a reason why Doom is not in the list for 93' and its understandable, and almost no one argued against this, which is in contrary to some more of recent games from probably younger gamers.

 

[Lionel Richie]

To those saying Killzone and Uncharted. Have you actually played any PC games from 2006 and up till today?

This so much. I'm a console gamer because I'm overly lazy and I don't care about worrying about specs, but people need to get a serious reality check if they seriously think Killzone beats Crysis on anything tech related.

 

[goonergaz]

Going back to 1984, Marble Madness always seemed technically impressive with it's impressive 'cgi esq' visuals

 

[mclem]

It wouldnt be a good discussion, because You would have even more posts from people who look at art and thinks this is tech. Hardware must be included into the discussion.

I strongly disagree.

There is a reason why Doom is not in the list for 93' and its understandable, and almost no one argued against this,

I did

 

[SystemUser]

All of them. Game engines are truly marvels of engineering, but the games that come out of them aren't special in my opinion. I guess it can be special in instances wherein a game is released by the same team who created the engine--but it should only be for that particular year. The rest shouldn't count as they are merely rehashes of the same thing with a different skin.

And because my opinion is far from being popular, I'd give the nod to NintendoLand in 2012 for introducing 5-player asymmetric gameplay on a single console at 60fps which was something unprecedented in videogame history.

I am not familiar enough with Nintendoland to to know, but I thought that it was just running on a modified version of the Wii Sports engine. I assume you are talking about the gamepad stuff too. Isn't most of the gamepad stuff rehash from when Nintendo made the Gamecube Gameboy Advance link cable? I am pretty sure that the Gameboy was basically a dummy screen (and controller) and not running the game.


Super Smash Bros for the Wii U and Super Smash Bros Brawl are both using the Super Smash Bros Melee engine updated over time. Nintendo didn't build an engine from the ground up for each game.


What are the rules exactly where you praise Nintendo's third iteration as special, originally crafted work, but slam Gears of War as just being a game presented on an engine?

 

[Joseph Merrick]

nice nostalgic video for ofp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjdCWCjb_Lw

hehe

 

[a Master Ninja]

That is a rad OP.

 

[Weltall Zero]

OK, this is an awesome idea for a thread, and on top of it, I wasn't expecting the OP to actually provide games and screenshots for all years. Mad props to you, Phediuk.

 

[DivineRage002]

ATTENTION PLEASE

Let me quote the very OT of this thread.

Is there a more elegant way to say "the game that pushes the most powerful hardware the furthest, representing the bleeding edge of video game tech for each year"?

Anything console is instantly out of the question for the past few years.

Killzone, uncharted and many other PS360/"Next gen" console games are already out of date by PC standards on the day they are released.

I'm not in here shouting master race and what not, but console hardware IS lagging behind, and has been for years.

I do agree that ARMA 2 shouldn't be in the OP though, very underwhelming graphically.

To those who say driveclub, please have a look at project cars. Thank you. (NEVERMIND, game not out yet)

 

[mclem]

ATTENTION PLEASE

Let me quote the very OT of this thread.

Is there a more elegant way to say "the game that pushes the most powerful hardware the furthest, representing the bleeding edge of video game tech for each year"?

As I mentioned: I find that statement to be an oxymoron, and inherently poorly-founded. Ergo, I decided the latter part was the intent.

 

[LesPaul]

This is such an amazing Thread...very very informative thank you

 

[benzy]

ATTENTION PLEASE

Let me quote the very OT of this thread.



Anything console is instantly out of the question for the past few years.

Killzone, uncharted and many other PS360/"Next gen" console games are already out of date by PC standards on the day they are released.

I'm not in here shouting master race and what not, but console hardware IS lagging behind, and has been for years.

I do agree that ARMA 2 shouldn't be in the OP though, very underwhelming graphically.

To those who say driveclub, please have a look at project cars. Thank you.

pCars isn't even out yet, hence it's not in the discussion.

 

[DivineRage002]

pCars isn't even out yet, hence it's not in the discussion.

I stand corrected. I'm sure there are other examples however.

 

[DevilFox]

You are still confusing two different techniques doing two different things. The same level of "roundness" (you are confusing what MLAA did in God of War III) could be done with SMAA (available to everyone on PC) in hitman. What tesselation and MLAA do are completeley different...

I'm not confusing, unless you're saying that Kratos' head is round thanks to polygons (the model is around 20k, sounds average to me if not even a little lower than average) and in this case I'm wrong and you can skip the rest of the post.
Now, I just checked again the game settings just to be sure. Tesselation is what allows 47 to have the head as round as Kratos' and even better. The only AA available in the settings is FXAA which isn't as good as MLAA. Other AA are available using our GPU settings, sure, and maybe with the SMAA the results are pretty much the same but that's a little unfair I'd say :|
Hitman Absolution offers FXAA and Tesselation and only with the second one we can have a nice rounded head but with a greater performance hit compared to MLAA, that's what I'm saying.
This is 47's head with and without Tesselation and no other external AA applied:

Of course Tesselation does other things, I'm just addressing this specific element (the head).
Said that, it seems most disagree with this consideration about performance hence I'll not bring it up again.

 

[wazoo]

So, most advanced tech is the most powerful or is it the most power efficient? Honest question.

power efficiency is - I think - not the point here. i doublt the Sega arcade cabinets were cheap or power efficient at all.

Art and software magic are one thing - for me, Xenoblade is the last game I said wow - still, I will never nominate it as candidate for this thread.

 

[LamerDeluxe]

2003 needs at least a mention of TRON 2.0, it makes great use of shaders to create the characteristic TRON glow.

 

[LSauchelli]

In defense of Gears' 2006 'honorable mention', wasn't the 360 really close to top of the line PC hardware that year? It was blown out of the water by 2007, but I remember it being really, really good, for a couple of months.

 

[vio]

Far Cry was more advanced than Doom 3.

 

[Dictator93]

Far Cry was more advanced than Doom 3.

It didnt have per pixel hit detection or fully real time lighting. Its kinda hard to put it ahead.

 

[Dictator93]

IA lot of stuff

kratos' head is smooth because the base model has enough polygons on the head to make it unnoticeablly polygonal at 720p. AKA, at the distances you typically see his head, pixels are bigger or the same size as the polygons which form the curvature of his head. MLAA just helps with the invetiable:

That you see at the top of that ball.

ALso, using SMAA (which with depth detection is superior to God Of War 3s MLAA) in that game isnt unfair, just as it is isnt unfair to use MSAA in that game or SSAA.
Agent 47 has more polygons on his head.

 

[KDR_11k]

A lot of racing and fighting games in the list which are the easiest games to make look good (racing because there's practically nothing organic in view and cars look far more realistic than humans in games, fighting games because they only have one room and two characters to render).

I'd definitely go for something like Total Annihilation for 1997. It isn't as pretty as a game with like three things on screen at a time but it made up for that in scale with large armies and massive superweapons. AFAIK it was the first RTS with a smooth 3D terrain and projectile simulation and all that jazz. It required up to 64MB RAM for the largest maps and resolutions go up as far as your graphics card will support, e.g. 1600x1200 (not that screens with that res were common then). Up to ten players in a match and up to 5000 units in play (with over 250 available with the Core Contingency expansion and many more with mods). Also let you download extra units at like 50 kilobytes a piece and plug them into the game.

Oh and how common was dynamic music back in the day?

 

[Dragonborn]

Why not just make a separate "Most technically advanced Console Games" thread. It was pretty clear from the start which way this one would lean towards

 

[Horse Armour]

Is there a more elegant way to say "the game that pushes the most powerful hardware the furthest, representing the bleeding edge of video game tech for each year"? Because that's what I'm looking for here.

I was shocked to see mainly PC games as by that count this thread should only have PS4 games as I have yet to see any PC graphics card with 8GB GDDR5 RAM.

 

[tarheel91]

I feel like Planetside 2 deserves some mention for managing as many players as it does while still looking very nice.

 

[RespectThySole]

Any reason why Halo CE isn't at least an honorable mention?

 

[rashbeep]

Far Cry was more advanced than Doom 3.

Maybe in water rendering. That's all I can think of.

 

[Alej]

Any reason why Halo CE isn't at least an honorable mention?

Too late on PC.

 

[Dictator93]

Any reason why Halo CE isn't at least an honorable mention?

Maybe he hasnt updated it.

Too late on PC.

Smooth.

 

[pswii60]

No GTA3 for 2001?

It might not have been a looker but the open world tech was mind blowing for a console game back then.

 

[HTupolev]

Maybe he hasnt updated it.

If OP thought it was a plausible contender or winner, it probably would have been added when we had this exact same discussion yesterday (which is when OP added Gran Turismo 3 and MGS2 to the contenders).

 

[Bornstellar]

Games with a dynamic shadow model will render similarly. Some game models could make up for the dark shadows by updating with a mixture of baked and real-time shadows. In DriveClub's case there's nothing in the lighting or shadows that's baked. It relies on GI to get that kind of opaqueness in the shadows, sometimes it doesn't look too great as the car shadows could be a bit less opaque to the point where the car looks floating.

Simulating GI in Unreal Engine works the same way as that model example you said games don't render.

I stand corrected. Most games don't render that way. I take it Driveclub uses fairly low precision GI then, enough to lighten shadows but not enough for radiance off a gnome.

 

[MrCunningham]

ATTENTION PLEASE

I'm not in here shouting master race and what not, but console hardware IS lagging behind, and has been for years.

Console hardware has always been a compromise between price point, manufacturing costs and performance. By definition it can't be high end because it was made for mass consumer consumption. In the 80's and early 90's arcades represented the highest end of gaming hardware.

This is why companies like Sega and Namco dominate this list. Nintendo really dropped out of being an arcade game developer after the global success of the NES. Sure they still released some token arcade games, but they never put an emphasis on pushing the bleeding edge in arcades

. In the late 90's up to current times, PC's have been taking over that mantle as the place for cutting edge graphics. This really happened after the 3D graphics card explosion that happened with 3DFX in in 1996/1997.

 

[Z3M0G]

Can't see a single image in the OP... for a very interesting topic...

I hate my work network right now... they suddenly blocked all these image hosting sites 2 weeks ago...

 

[ChronotriggerJM]

In Crysis Warhead, which came out a year earlier... there is an entire train sequence but you can actually get off the train at any time... and it is not just repeating level sections.. .but rather driving through a real multiple kiometer long space. Similarly, the facial and body animation in something like Crysis is more than comparable. As well as almost every "set piece" moment in the game being driven by an actual physics engine, and not a play backed canned cut scene. Hence why something like Arma is technically advanced, it is doing everything via simulation.

I mean... I think all those games look great on their hardware, but they are just not doing things which are necessarily new and groundbreaking, but working their technical limitations well into their art.

On the other hand, rendering wise I think something like KZSF is doing quite a god damn lot, and deserves a great contender mention for 2014. More so than infamous for example.

I think the thing that made Uncharted 2's train implementation so impressive is that the sheer volume of animation work for the character and the enemies required to pull the piece off was mind blowing. You would pass through various tunnels, where the player would need to jump down the sides, or risk getting smashed by random obstacles, the enemy would have to as well. The player could navigate around the train, avoiding the enemy eyesight and sweep in for flanked kills.

It wasn't technical limitations that prevented them from actually traversing a set amount of track, more gameplay flow to change as the character progressed. Naughty Dog if anything would have no issues implementing a system similar to Crytecks approach, as they've basically mastered asset streaming from area to area.

 

[cireza]

Came here to see if Sega was where it deserved to be, and was not disappointed.

Now please realize that Yu Suzuki was responsible for all those games.

Still waiting for my Saturn port of Virtua Fighter 3.

 

[derExperte]

So, most advanced tech is the most powerful or is it the most power efficient? Honest question.



Good point. Thanks for your input, much appreciated.

Is it really okay to be that condescendent here on GAF? I took time to write my thoughts and I only deserve this? Please.

Modern PC gaming hardware is actually very power efficient relative to their performance.

And yes, declaring that nothing came close to KZ2 as fact deserves such a reaction.